This is a super cute book that is for anyone wanting to read something sweet.
Written in letters after the end of WWII, the story is about a woman named Juliet who gets a letter from a man on Guernsey who came into possession of one of her old books by Charles Lamb. They begin correspondence and she finds out that in order to deal with being occupied by Germans during the war, this small group of odd neighbors begin a literary society--with an interesting story as to how it started and its name. The Society has continued on after the war and from the society begin to open up about their experiences in the war. Juliet was also a writer for a local British news paper and wants to write a book with their collection of letters. Of course, Juliet has her own life back in London, men, writing, friends, post-war happenings.
It is a great story with full characters, many of them with fascinating stories. This is one of the best parts of the books. So many different people with different points of view, with different happenings, ways of coping with trauma, and different ways of being heroic in times of difficulty.
I also greatly enjoyed the romance part of it. Rich American guy who is charming and witty and a lowly country boy from Guernsey. A little love triangle without being high school dramatic. They are adults here and act as such, for the most part. It wasn't heavy on the sappy romance, which was good, but there was sweetness and a comedy about it.
There isn't really anything that I dislike about it. It was written well. However, the audio book that I listened to for it was misleading. The gentleman they had voicing the younger men wasn't that young sounding. So the younger men sounded like they were in their sixties instead of late twenties, early thirties. When she started liking a certain person, I was concerned that she liked the oldest gent in the literary society. It wasn't until I looked at the Netflix cover that I realized, "Oh, he's much younger" which was a relief.
I very much enjoyed it and will reread it again. I've also heard the Netflix movie did it justice, so I'm going to be taking a look at that soon.
